Vancouver is
now an international city, a destination, a place to see. In the early ‘70s it
was more of a backwater, far from the seat of power in Ontario. The relatively
mild climate was a draw as was the hippie cred it got from being on the same
coast as San Fran where everything was happenin’. Even in Halifax, we had heard
of the hippie mecca of 4th Avenue but, when we realized we had to go
back to Canada, our first choice to relocate had been Montreal. We may have
pooled our resources together to make our trip but we didn’t think of ourselves
as a commune or fitting into the hippie scene. We weren’t drawn to Vancouver but
it was where we ended up.
It wasn’t
all hippies. Many of the people in Vancouver were like us, young 20 somethings
trying to find their way in the world. It was kind of like Halifax, only
warmer. Like Halifax, Vancouver was a port city but it was bigger and flasher –
all those neon signs. As a newcomer to Halifax I had found it easy to get lost,
Vancouver was easier to get around. It was laid out in a grid with numbered
avenues and there were trolley buses that went everywhere I wanted to go. Best
of all, bus fare was 25¢.
We were
slowly getting to know our way around as we learned the bus routes to get to
work and explored our new environments. It was when we started to connect with
people outside our crew of four that things started to get more interesting.
Sources
Bird, Kate Vancouver in the Seventies: Photos from a
Decade that Changed the City. Greystone Books, Vancouver, 2016.
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